The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

“Thus,” says Herodotus, “Ionia revolted a second time from the Persians.”

THE FATE OF IONIA.

He makes no comment upon the fact. It would have been difficult for him to do so. He had regarded the first revolt as a conspicuous blunder, probably because he looked upon it as premature. Even now he sings no pæan of emancipation. Maybe the Halikarnassian believed that, in spite of the brilliant success of the year, the permanent freedom of the Ionian towns could never be secured so long as Persia retained its hold on West Asia. He wrote with well-nigh a century of experience behind him; he died a century before there arose a power upon the Ægean whose unity of strength made it fit to cope with the dead weight of the Persian power in Asia.

The Athenians were credited by popular tradition with having played the greatest part in the battle; but it may be suspected that had Leutychides’ version of the fighting survived, it might have contained some criticism of the error of a premature attack, to which the escape of a large part of the Persian army was probably due.

After destroying the enemy’s camp and fleet the Greeks withdrew to Samos with such booty as they had captured.

H. ix. 106.

The action of the Ionians at Mykale had raised the whole question of the future of the Asiatic Greeks. There was a large section in the fleet who saw,—what the sequel proved to be correct,—that the European Greeks were not in a position to maintain the freedom of continental Ionia against the Persians for an indefinite space of time. That would have meant the maintenance of a large garrison within the various towns, such as the highly composite Greek alliance could not regard as within the realm of practical politics. It was consequently proposed to tranship the Ionians en masse to the European shore, and to leave Ionia to the Persian. The strategic position of the Ionian cities was indeed fatally weak.

But, after all, it would hardly be the strategical question that presented itself to the Greeks gathered at Samos. What they did know was that these Ionian cities had failed to resist conquest by Lydia and Persia, and had failed in one tremendous effort to throw off the Persian yoke; and that one of the conspicuous causes of failure had been the difficulty of sustained united action. Of the commercial advantages and their causes, they were probably as well aware as the best instructed modern student with the best maps at his disposal.

It was, no doubt, this balance of advantage and disadvantage which led to the division of opinion in the council as to the best course to be pursued. H. ix. 106. The Peloponnesians were in favour of planting the Ionians on the lands of the medized Greeks at home. To this proposal the Athenians offered an uncompromising resistance, and claimed that they alone had the right to decide the matter, since the Ionians were colonists of their own. The claim was a shadowy one; but the resistance was successful. It is noticeable, however, that the Asiatic Greeks who were in the first instance received into the alliance were Samians, Chians, Lesbians, and the other islanders, but none of the inhabitants of the cities of the mainland. Thus were sown the seeds of that famous Delian League which was destined in the near future to play so great a part in the history of the fifth century.

Throughout Greek history the Hellespontine region is the link between Europe and Asia. To it the Oriental seeking to win empire in Europe ever turned, while the European, whether on the defensive or the offensive against the power of the East, was at all times anxious to secure its possession. H. ix. 114. And thither now the fleet from Samos sailed, under the impression, says Herodotus, that it would find the bridge in existence. If such an impression did actually exist with the Greeks at this time, the fact bears strong evidence to the silence and desertion which in these years brooded over that highway of the nations—the Ægean. The fleet was delayed on the voyage by adverse winds, and was obliged to anchor for a time at Lektos. Thence it sailed to Abydos, where the Greeks discovered for the first time that the bridge was no longer in existence.